After nightfall the whole area suddenly came alive again. You realized you had been in the midst of an enormous but invisible and silent crowd. There was a good deal of rumbling going on around. Quite a few planes were up. These were to drown out the noise of the tanks. I moved off with four or five from my section to go down to the first-wave platoons to which we had been attached. We reached the frontline down the slope of the hill from our orchard, and walked along the knee-deep jumping-off trench, which was filled with men. I left Tatton and McLaren at their platoon. McLaren was spreading his rubber sheet over the parapet: “It’s to keep me breeches clean when I go over,” he said to me. We wished each other luck and I went on up the trench and reported to the platoon officer. I should say it was then about 11 o’clock or midnight. I was sleepy, could hardly keep my eyes open, and found a funk hole. D.R. McClare, who had been detailed to the same platoon with me, said he would route me out when things started. It seemed that I had hardly shut my eyes when he was punching me: “Rise and Shine! The lid goes off in half an hour.” I took my place with him in the trench, looked my rifle ammunition over, or rather felt it over, as it was black as hell, and squatted down in the trench with my back to Fritz. A shell or two droned over and burst way back. A cockney voice a few feet away was chanting in a low voice: “Just before the battle, Mother, I was eating bread and cheese.” I remember thinking that I must not walk too fast or I’d bump into our own barrage. There seemed to be some rumbling around back of us, otherwise dead silence.
Suddenly a great flash of sheet lightning lit up the western horizon as far as I could see. Then, in an instant the sky was filled with a weird whistling and shrieking. There was a roar and a crash and the ground started to jump about. Then more lightning, the smell of explosives, and, almost on top of us, two or three great hulks—the tanks. One gun was firing right in our trench and the “Stretcher Bearers!” cry was heard before we had budged an inch. (To preserve secrecy no gun had registered for the barrage.) Two minutes went by in this air- and earthquake. Then whistles blew along the line. We grabbed our rifles and advanced.
November 6. Rain continues.
November 8. Revolver practice.
At nine o’clock this morning the German Armistice Commission met Marshal Foch in his special train in the Compiègne Forest.
November 9. Many rumors of peace.
November 11. Peace declared. Hostilities cease at 11:00 a.m. Ye gods!
December 27. Turn in revolvers. Cologne out of bounds. Some damned idiot been holding people up.
There had been several disturbances in Cologne among the troops themselves. The Guards Division had come in there, and their officers were very touchy about being saluted. The Colonials had decided that the war was over, and they had never been very keen about saluting anyway. Imperial picquets picked up Canadian soldiers, and the roughhouses started. There were several brawls in the pubs, ending up with a big one down in the red-light district in which a few men got killed. The Military Police acted more like sons of bitches than ever, which did not help the general spirit of restlessness that was prevailing. The result was that we were pulled out of there soon after and left the Watch on the Rhine to the Imperial Chocolate Soldiers.
The slowness in demobilization, the constant reports of the great numbers of Americans who were going home ahead of us, the lousiness of the parade-ground yellow bastards who had swarmed out to smarten us up, and the general reaction after the armistice started things humming.
January, 1, 1919. Paid 30 marks. Parcel from Fishers. No resolutions. Band concert in street. Civilians made to take their hats off to national anthem. An example of caddishness and pettiness that should be beneath the British. Goddamned bunch of bullying Prussian bastards there “British Officers and Gentlemen.”
What had got my goat was that one of our officers had knocked the hat off a civilian and thrown it in the mud. The victim was an inoffensive old man who probably didn’t know what tune was being played. At least, it seemed so. I really felt terribly ashamed and embarrassed about the business, that sort of thing never failing to react upon the perpetrator and making him look damned foolish.
May 19. On draft for Regina. Five minutes later taken off. Profanity the order of the day, not to mention blasphemy. Promised to be put on draft tomorrow, but being on one draft is worth waiting for all the rest. Y Emmas concert party. Pretty good.
May 20. On draft for Carmania. Sailing tomorrow. Medical inspection, etc. Grave digging this a.m. for men killed in the riot. I must admit I did not kill myself working. I’ve set my hand to quite a few things in this army, and the last item is grave digging.
May 21. Left Rhyl 7 a.m. Train to Liverpool. Embarked on SS Carmania . Steerage, R Section. Not very bad. Cavalry Brigade onboard and several civilian passengers. Set sail finally at 7 p.m. after a lot of idiotic monkeying around.
May 31. Arrived Montreal 8 a.m. Discharged noon. Bath and change and down to 7:40 train to New York.
Paths of Glory Page 24